Garner waved a screwdriver at him with a deep chuckle. “No need to waste good money. Even when you got plenty of it, Richie Rich,” he teased.
Campbell shoved his thumbs under his armpits, rocking back on his heels. “You won’t be wasting any money if you don’t listen to what Dr. Klein said, because you’ll be too dead to waste anything. As I recall, he said you were supposed to take it easy, especially in this heat. So why don’t you hand over that screwdriver before things get ugly and I have to dirty my lily-white hands by taking you out.” Campbell shoved his palm under his father’s nose with a warm smile.
Garner sighed, slapping the tool into his palm with irritated reluctance. “That bloody doctor and all his rules. He’s like the gestapo with a stethoscope. I like to tinker. I miss tinkering. What’s the world coming to if a man can’t tinker in his own damned garage?”
Slapping his dad on the back, Campbell chuckled. “Not an unsightly, heatstroke-induced end, at least not for you. Not on my watch anyway. Now c’mon. Don’t you wanna watch Wheel of Fortune?”
“That Vanna, she’s just not as cute as she used to be.” He clucked his tongue at the shame of it all.
With a shove of his elbow, Campbell pushed the door to the kitchen open, the waft of cool air a welcome respite after the heat of the day, and the heat of Max Henderson. Wait, ’scuse me. Maxine Cambridge. “Okay, how about some dinner?”
“Bah,” Garner muttered, waving a hand at him as he headed to his favorite recliner, slumping down in the buttery-colored leather to dig around the seat for the remote. “You’re a crappy cook.”
“Wow. Who’s got his grumpy on tonight?”
“I’m going crazy here, kiddo. I need something to do.”
He shot a sympathetic look at his father. Garner was always an active man. If it wasn’t hobbies, like woodworking or tinkering with some electrical appliance, it was Campbell’s little league games or Cub Scouts. He’d never been much of a TV watcher—he’d never been one to allow himself to be sidelined. This heart attack had put him on the bench, and it was killing him as sure as it was keeping him alive.
“I know you are, Dad, but you’re not doing anything until Dr. Klein gives the okay. That’s why I’m here. Remember? To help you after your heart attack—which, in case you’re wondering, nearly gave me one. You don’t seriously think I’m doing this just so I can spend my days with all these slammin’ silver-haired seniors, do you?”
His dad’s laughter was from deep in his chest. “I’m being an ungrateful old curmudgeon, ain’t I?”
The nod Campbell gave him was sharp, but his smile was affectionate. “You betcha. But if you’d just let me, I’d—”
“Uh, uh, uh,” Garner admonished, instantly quieting Campbell’s protest. “I won’t hear it. What you’re doin’ now is all the help I need. Got that, palie?”
Pride. His father had much. Campbell threw up his hands in mock defeat and headed toward the kitchen. “I hear you. But if I have to hear you, you have to hear me. So hear me when I tell you, I’m The Enforcer. If you want me to help you in the village, I hold the keys to the kingdom until you’re better.”
“Fine, Prince Charming,” he grumbled back.
Campbell chuckled into the interior of the new stainless steel fridge he’d talked Garner into buying and dug around to find the bag of broccoli florets and the bag of carrots for steaming, or maybe a salad. “How do you feel about a salad, Dad?” he called over his shoulder. “I don’t have to cook that.”
Christ, he really was a crappy cook. He needed to look up some heart-healthy recipes online for fish and chicken. They couldn’t go on eating raw vegetables and prunes forever. Though, it was what had led him to the Cluck-Cluck Palace today. So he could eat fat and salt without the guilt his father bestowed upon him in the way of puppy-dog eyes and beads of saliva forming at the corners of his mouth.
“I feel the same way about a salad as I do about that crappy yogurt you told me was gonna taste just like key lime pie.”
Campbell stuck his head back around the kitchen doorway and frowned in his father’s direction. “Hey, cranky pants. It was on the list of approved dietary suggestions. How can you blame me for falling for it? It was pie . . .”
“It was shit for shinola. Can’t we order a pizza? C’mon, son. What’s one little slice of Giuseppe’s with extra cheese? Wait. No. I’ll make you a deal. No extra cheese. Just plain old pizza. Whaddya say?”
Holding up the bag of broccoli florets, Campbell shook his head in the negative. “Oh, no, Papa-San. One little slice of pizza’s what put you in that hospital. All that crap you were eating on the fly was clogging your arteries.” It was all Campbell could do not to visibly shudder when he remembered seeing his father ashen and gasping for breath behind an oxygen mask on that hospital bed. “You’ll harden your arteries right up with all that gooey cheese, and then where will we be? You’ll never get a date with that Ramona over on Petunia if you can’t move your arms and legs. She likes to do the Watusi. That dance looks like work and a lot of heavy breathing. You don’t want to blow that, do you?”
Garner’s face went from sour to curiously cheerful at the mention of the cute little Ramona. “She’s a card, huh? Don’t get me wrong, she’s not your mother, but she’s one to watch.” He winked.
There was a slight pause in his ongoing battle to keep his father on the straight and narrow path to righteous good health. No one was his mother. He missed her as much as his father did. All the more reason to hang on to his father for as long as he could.
“Speaking of cute gals, you shouldn’t be here feeding me tri-colored vegetables I only want to stick my finger down my throat and throw up. You oughta be out findin’ your own cutie-pie, not hangin’ around your old man.”
His father’s suggestion made Campbell’s expression instantly guarded. “Who needs women when you can hang out with an old man who wears Bengay for cologne and support hose socks with his sandals?” He jokingly pointed to Garner’s knee-high pressure tights.
Garner lifted off the recliner, giving his leg a jiggle. “Sporty look, don’t you think?” Making his way to the kitchen dinette, he plopped down in one of the striped cushioned chairs while Campbell set about his anything-but-proficient vegetable chopping. “Hey, you met Mona’s daughter yet? I hear she used to be a real looker.”
His head popped up. “Used to be?” The defensive tone to his voice made him regret his words, so much so that he wanted to slice his tongue off with the knife. Garner knew him well. Too well, and he always knew when Campbell had something to hide.
His father’s grin was tinted with lasciviousness. “So you did meet her.”
With a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders, he mumbled, “Yep.”
“She as purty in real life as she was in those commercials she used to do?”
Campbell had never seen the commercials, but yeah, she was, in his father’s words, damned purty. Gray sweat suit, Ziploc bag of dog excrement, hot lips, and all. “I didn’t pay a lot of attention.”
“Yes, ya did.”
“Did not.”
“You did, too. Mona told me you did. I called to see if you needed any help over there. Mona said you were in the bathroom wooing her daughter. She said it looked like you two were doing just fine.”
He heard the teasing laughter in his dad’s voice. It made him grind his teeth. “Is nothing sacred in this village?”
“Nope. Not with the bunch of gossips we got runnin’ around here. ’Sides, what’s the big deal? You like Mona’s girl. I think it’s good that you finally like someone.”
Someone. Yeah. He noted the innuendo in Garner’s tone. The innuendo that once had a stern sentiment attached to it. “It’s time to get on with the business of living, son,” were the words his dad had muttered over and over for two years. Campbell had resented those words—words everyone said when they didn’t know how else to help you get past your grief. Meaningless and empty, but meant to comfort.
Today, in the her
e and now, his outlook was different, less resentful, and far more open to the possibility of the business of living.
Because he’d been reunited with Max Henderson. That’s who she’d always be in his mind—no matter how many rich, almost ex-husbands she collected. Outwardly, she was still as hot as she’d been in high school. She just didn’t see it quite the way he did. She was also a neurotic mess waiting to happen.
It was fantastic. Intriguing. Multilayered.
He liked.
For the first time in a very long time, Campbell found he had more than just a passing interest in the opposite sex. Unfortunately, Max was far from interested in anyone who had dangly bits at this point in her life. He completely understood why after his run-in with her snarling, seething, holier-than-thou husband. She virtually cringed at the idea of any kind of confrontation with him, leaving Campbell pissed off for her and beating his chest like some new age Neanderthal.
What a screwed up emotion to have on her behalf so early on in the mating game.
That’s what this is, he silently acknowledged. A mating game.
One he planned to win.
Especially after that kiss. Brief, alluring, sweet, shy.
Hot.
“You’re awful quiet in there, bucko,” Garner taunted from the dinette. “So you like Mona’s daughter. Whaddya gonna do about it?”
Dumping the broccoli and carrots into a bowl, Campbell fished in the fridge for some lettuce. “She’s a mess, Dad.”
“Who isn’t? Doesn’t that Dr. Phil say everyone’s got baggage? You know what being a mess is all about. Maybe you can be double the mess together.”
The grin he couldn’t prevent spread across his lips. “I mean that she’s not divorced yet. She needs time to heal, figure out what she’s going to do with the second half of her life. I’m thinkin’ she’s not ready for a relationship.”
“I hear tell she wants to be divorced, but that husband of hers, the girls call him Penis-less, is bein’ a real jackass about it. Took all of his fancy money and left her and the boy with nothin’.”
Pulling a measuring cup from a drawer, he slammed it shut with his hip, incredibly angry once more. Gripping the handle of the cup, he took hold of his irrational reaction and set about measuring the exact amount of salad dressing his father was allotted. “What the girls say is true. As a matter of fact, I met her husband purely by chance today, and he’s definitely jackass material. She’s scared spitless of him.”
His father was silent for a moment. “You don’t think he raised his hand to her, do ya? Son of a bitch oughta have his Twinkies hack-sawed off.”
Campbell figured that statement deserved a moment’s thought. Max had been afraid to speak up—she’d shrunk right before his eyes. At the first hint of discord, she’d been right in there with whatever it took to cool things off. It had left him wanting to coach her in the art of giving someone hell, and angry. Very angry. “Can’t say for sure, Dad. So maybe even you, playa that you are, can see why turning on the Casanova might be bad timing just yet.”
His father shook his head, the thick strands of his silvery white hair falling across his forehead. “Nope. I say strike while the iron’s hot. You’re a good boy. You sure ain’t no wife-beater. You like her. That’s enough for me.”
“Uh, Pop, she has to be a willing participant.”
“Says who?”
“Law enforcement.” Campbell plunked down the brightly colored salad on the table along with half a turkey sandwich on whole wheat with mustard.
Garner eyed him from across the small, round table, the corners of his blue eyes wrinkling with amusement. “So you gonna go get her?”
Campbell grinned back. “Yep.”
“Atta boy.”
“You ready, Maxie?”
Tightening her ponytail, Maxine nodded into the bathroom mirror. “Be right there,” she called to her mother just as Connor came in to stand behind her.
“You’re going like that?”
She frowned back at him. “What does ‘like that’ mean?”
His dark brown head, which topped her by at least six inches these days, cocked to the left. “It means you don’t have any makeup on, and you’re wearing Gram’s really bright sweats. It hurts my eyes to look at you.” He squinted for dramatic effect, placing a broad hand on her shoulder. “I think you’re in a slump, Mom.”
With a drop of her shoulders, she realized Connor was right. What a shock to his system to see her looking so downtrodden.
And in neon yellow with black piping, no less.
He still hadn’t gotten over her less than glam-wow appearance these days. Who could blame him when he’d almost never seen her looking anything less than fabulous even when she was doing nothing more than staying in.
But things changed. Priorities changed. She needed a gallon of milk more than she needed to coordinate her eye shadow with the color of her shoes.
The half of her that was exhausted and rebelling against anything remotely adorned or primped to impress, protested. “I think this is a good color for me.”
“Yellow sucks, Mom. Nobody should wear it,” he said with a solemn tone and a facetious grin.
A roll of her eyes signaled her discontent. “Look, I’m not going to Bingo Madness to get a hot date. I’m going because the village is paying me good money to call the numbers as a stand-in for Midge Carter. Her psoriasis is acting up. So lay off your old mother, would you? This isn’t a beauty pageant.” Thank Jesus, too. On a day like today, for sure, Teona Wilcox would have no trouble stealing that much-desired crown she’d spent twelve pageants chasing after Maxine for.
A stab of self-consciousness niggled her. The will to summon up some longing for pretty clothes and mani-pedis escaped her. It had run away just like she had.
If she wasn’t careful, she and her “will” would end up on the back of a carton of milk. What did it matter what she looked like anyway? It was just a bunch of little old men and women playing bingo. Besides, it took a whole lot less effort and goop to slap your hair in a ponytail and put on some sweats. She’d get an “A” for time management if someone were giving them out.
Connor scoffed at her with an impatient grunt. “You’re not old, Mom. You’re seasoned.”
Or way overmarinated. “Yeah? Is that your new vocabulary word for the week?” she teased.
“Maxie! Get a move on, would ya? If we don’t shake a leg, that damn Deloris Griswald’s gonna steal up all the good bingo mojo seats. That woman makes me want to pull every last hair out of her lucky troll doll’s head.”
Maxine let her chin fall to her chest while she massaged her temples and asked the man upstairs to keep her from purposely falling on a sharp Ginsu in front of her unsuspecting son. When she looked up, Connor was covering his mouth with his forearm to keep from laughing. “Do your homework, okay? And try to restrain yourself from eating your grandmother’s sardines. I know what a temptation greasy fish in a can can be.”
He grinned at her, shoving his hands in the pockets of his low-slung jeans. “I’ve sworn off fish in a can—it binds me.”
Maxine pressed a kiss to his cheek with a giggle. She was so grateful for her baby boy. Connor was a shiny penny in a puddle of piss. “I’ll see you around ten. Oh, and if Mrs. Dewit calls about that cracked-out poodle of hers needing a ‘walkie,’ tell her I died. Love you.” Sweeping out of the bathroom, she grabbed her purse off the kitchen table and stopped just shy of where her mother stood rooted to the kitchen floor.
“What?”
Mona pursed her lips. “You’re wearing that?”
Maxine looked down at her outfit once more. Was it really as bad as everyone was making it out to be? “Yeah. What’s wrong with it?”
Mona tucked her suitcase-sized patchwork purse under her breasts, crossing her arms over it. “Would it hurt you to gussie up a little, Maxine?”
“Why?” Maxine’s response was lifeless and flat.
Her mother’s sigh was ragged. “Because it’
s good for the soul, young lady. I remember a Maxine who didn’t leave the house without at least a carat’s worth of diamonds somewhere on her body.”
A hand went to her hip in a defiant gesture. “If Maxine had a carat’s worth of diamonds this minute, she’d have hocked them for cash at Chester’s Tchotchkes. I don’t have diamonds, and I don’t have a whole lot of bingo-appropriate attire. I don’t have a whole lot of attire, period, remember? When I left Fin, I packed very little, fully expecting he’d let me get my clothes once I was over the initial shock that he was boinking my best friend’s sister. And I borrowed this from your closet.”
“Does that mean you can’t brush your hair and put on some lipstick?”
Maxine’s hand flew to her ponytail. “I did brush my hair, and I don’t want to wear lipstick. It’s bingo, Mom, not The Bachelorette.”
“What about maybe plucking your eyebrows? They look like a Siberian husky’s taken up residence on your forehead.”
“I couldn’t find the tweezers . . .” she mumbled.
“Rumor has it, Campbell might be there.” Mona used her enticing motherly voice to try and coax the will into her to glam up.
The mention of Campbell brought back the memory of his kiss. A kiss she wasn’t able to leave alone since it happened. She’d relived it twice daily for the last nine days—all right, sometimes hourly. An excited butterfly swirled in her stomach, but it was only one, so she mentally stomped on it and crushed its fluttering wings. All that talk of coffee and more than a week had passed since they’d last seen each other, and not so much as a phone call to have even a bottle of water. “So?”
There was a snort of disgust and the shuffle of orthopedic-shoe-wearing feet as Mona, clearly not making the impact she’d hoped for, pushed open the screen door and stomped off to her car.
You Dropped a Blonde on Me Page 8
